WNYT, Eagle partner on TV for The Berkshire Minute

PITTSFIELD -- WNYT-NewsChannel 13 on Monday televised its first newscast on WNYA "My4 Albany," the independent station the Albany, N.Y.-based NBC affiliate acquired earlier this year.

The Berkshire Minute will be a regular segment on the half-hour news program. The local news items are provided to WNYT through a news partnership with The Berkshire Eagle, according to WNYT News Director Eric Hoppel. The Eagle's masthead will be featured in the segment.

"It's a half-hour newscast that is intended to serve the entire Albany television market, and Pittsfield is a certainly a big part of that," Hoppel said. "We'll make it a point to focus on some specifically Berkshire County stories."

WNYT bought WYNA for $2.3 million earlier this year. The sale was announced in late February and completed in July.

WNYA's main studio is based in New York's Capital Region, but in 2009 the Federal Communications Commission issued the station a license to operate a television station in Pittsfield. That license expires in 2015.

Unlike WNYT, WNYA was not affiliated with a national network and had no news broadcast.

According to the FCC filing, WNYA had "significant negative operating cash flow" between fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2012. Those financial problems included a net income operating loss of $607,494 in fiscal 2012.

WNYT LLC hired about a half-dozen people after closing on the sale in July, according to the Business Review of Albany, N.Y.

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Hoppel said he wasn't sure how many employees WNYT had brought on since purchasing WNYA because he is only in charge of newsroom personnel.

"We hired a number of people in my department," he said. "We moved a whole TV station inside this station and have a whole new staff running it."

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